


Angelica Routes

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluffy as a Pomeranian, Menstruation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 18:47:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya/Gendry. Stuff about folk medicine, or something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angelica Routes

They are lying on a patch of frozen earth when he wakes up. Her hair tickles his nose and against the cold she feels steady and as warm as the dying embers of a fireplace. At the thought his arms wrap tighter around her. He thinks of the home he will one day carve out for them where she could sit by the fireplace all day long, and not out here in the frost-tinted earth. It will smell of fresh bread and he’ll hang dried lavender by the window and fill their world with its scent.

When he looks down, though, his heart wraps around his throat. There is blood on the floor, copper red, mingling with the dew.

“Arya, Arya.” He chokes out. He presses his fist against her heart and bites back tears when he feels it beat. She murmurs a little as he shakes her awake. “Arya, Arya, you’re bleeding.”

She muttered again, sat up, inspected the spot of blood on the floor and groaned. “Shit.”

“Arya, Arya, you need help.” He said.

“No, no, stop, it’s fine.” She said, half yawning. “It’s just my moon blood.”

Gendry looked at her. A smile rose in her eyes and crawled down to her lips. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

He felt his muscles stiffen with that look, that look which reminded him of how little he knew, how much distance remained between her life and his. His eyes dropped to the floor and he felt the warmth of her body leave, replaced with a bright fire in his blood.

Then he felt her hand on his arm, her cheek rest against his shoulder. He felt the breath in his chest return. The strange expressions of kindness she showed towards him were rare, but he remembered each one. More than the kissing and the fucking and the things that happened in the cusp of the night, he remembered these and loved these moments the most. 

“Did Jeyne never tell you?” She asked. She traced patterns in the skin of his shirt with her finger.

“Hm?” He said.

She sighed, rocked back. “A woman gets it every moon. She bleeds for a while, then stops.” He looked even more confused. “It means she can have a baby.”

He snapped his eyes towards her, and underneath her hand she could feel the tension course through him.

“It doesn’t mean I’m having a baby. It means I’m not.” She looked up at the sky and wondered how there could be so little colour there. “It’s good if I bleed.”

“It’s good if you bleed…” Gendry echoed. He looked towards the reddy earth that she had made. He thought of the blood on the edge of a sword and the blood that lay on the ground now. They were different, somehow. This blood meant life, the possibility of it, but also the absence of a life. They had both; together and seperately; brought blood on the edge of a sword, brought about that bright crimson death. That kind of blood spoke a simple, clean language to him. This one felt stranger, intangible, more unnerving.

“Can you move?” He asked.

“Yes.” She said, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. She hated how vulnerable this made her seem, how she could see in his eyes already that misguided concern he had for her body, for the fragility of that kind of womanhood she knew wasn’t hers’, not really.

She only liked him to see her that way when he worried he’d bruised her as he gripped her hips and thrust into her tight. Or when he kissed the tops of her breasts and marvelled at how soft her skin was like he was muttering a prayer to some god, whatever gods they had now.

“Can it hurt?” He asked, helping her upwards. She hid the wince as the pain bloomed from her stomach down to the tips of her toes.

“Kind of. It’s like after you get hit, and then there’s that ache.” She said, brushing some mud off his shoulders.

“Okay.” He said. He felt strange and unsure of what to do, of how to move and act. “Do I…?”

“Just.” She said. “Stop, I mean…Look at me.”

“It’s just strange.” He said, his cheeks growing pink. He stepped forward and tightened her furs around her shoulders. “Your body, I mean…it’s changed, a bit. I don’t know. I can’t think of it right in my head, somehow.”

She chewed on her lip a little. “Do you know what angelica root looks like?”

“You mean the tree?”

She nodded.

“Yeah. Jeyne used to stew it with milk for when the children had aches.” He said.

“Right. Get me that then.” She said. She watched him relax at the newfound clarity of it all, at the role he had been assigned. He smiled and disappeared, returning a while later with the roots in hand. He built up a fire and stewed the root with the goat’s milk they had batered for the other day. He watched it carefully, tending the fire so it didn’t overheat the milk. Arya watched him as the world darkened around them and the fire grew like a shared heartbeat between them. She quietly smiled at the seriousness of his face, marvelling at the tenderness he brought with him to such mundane things.

They drank the milk together. He laid down beside her and his fingertips brushed against her stomach, drawing routes from him to her.


End file.
